Drink up, the new pub's around the corner

This article was taken from the August 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.

London-based studio aberrant architecture thinks tomorrow's bars will be more like Victorian public houses; so it designed one for Wired. "They used to have rooms for people to work in," says studio director David Chambers. "They functioned as job centres, bureaux de change and post offices." Aberrant's drawing here shows how your local might soon look. "We've shown robotic bartenders, hackspaces, shared lockers and workspaces for freelancers," says Chambers. The architects were inspired after finding a diagram of a 19th-century Lambeth pub in the Victoria & Albert Museum archive in 2010. Since then, they have tried to adapt it into a community hub through projects such as the El Paso workspace/bar in Hoxton. "Most pubs have remained the same for 250 years," Chambers explains. "We're imagining new uses for it, rather than redesigning the pub itself."

Shop with lockers for customers to pick up goods

Roof garden with a vegetable plot, kitchen and beehive

Event space for exhibitions, talks, cinema and music

Workspace with controllable privacy screens and lighting

Maker space with tool hire, 3D printing and prototyping kit

Games room with space for local area network parties

This article was first published in the August 2014 issue of WIRED magazine